People who bought this also bought...

Mrs. Dalloway

It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life's happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.

A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

Orlando

Fantasy, love offering, exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining novel. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character lives as both a man and a woman through four centuries.

The Waves

Six children - Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny and Louis - meet in a garden close to the sea, their voices sounding over the constant echo of the waves that roll back and forth from the shore. The book follows them as they develop from childhood to maturity and follow different passions and ambitions; their voices are interspersed with interludes from the timeless and unifying chorus of nature.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

This fictionalized portrait of Joyce's youth is one of the most vivid accounts of the growth from childhood to adulthood. Dublin at the turn of the century provides the backdrop as Stephen Dedalus moves from town and society, towards the irrevocable decision to leave. It was the decision made by Joyce himself which resulted in the mature novels of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The Sound and the Fury

First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling", the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers: the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin, and the monstrous Jason.

The Voyage Out

The Voyage Out is Virginia Woolf's haunting tale about a naïve young woman's sea voyage from London to a small resort on the South American coast. In symbolic, lyrical, and intoxicating prose, her outward journey begins to mirror her internal voyage into adulthood as she searches for her personal identity, grapples with love, and learns how to face life intellectually and emotionally. Its wit and exquisiteness, and its profound depth and insight into humanity, will capture the imagination of the listener.

Ulysses

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

Night and Day

Night and Day, is a story about a group of young people trying to discover what it means to fall in love. It asks all the big questions: What does it mean to fall in love? Does marriage grant happiness? What is happiness? Night and Day is a conventional novel; however, it maps out for us the world of Virginia Woolf in its wondrous prose: for her it was the beginning, leading on to a prolonged engagement with her search for the means to express the 'inner life'.

Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon's mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

The Trial [Naxos AudioBooks]

The Trial is one of the great works of the 20th century - an extraordinary vision of one man put on trial by an anonymous authority on an unspecified charge. Kafka evokes all the terrifying reality of his ordeal.

Madame Bovary

In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of 19th-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply felt and sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. However, her aspirations and her desires to escape only bring her further disappointment and eventually lead to unexpected, painful consequences. Flaubert's critical portrait of bourgeois provincial life remains as powerful as ever

Beloved

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but 18 years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Jacob's Room

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's own modernist manifesto. Jacob Flanders is a mere point of contact between a crowd of people, appearing and disappearing in a tableau in which all is flux, without certainty and without a controlling viewpoint. But it seems that the author could not maintain this rigorous impersonality, and the radical technique breaks down, so that we finally see Jacob as a person, just as his world is blown apart.

The Waves

The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.

All That Man Is

Nine men: each of them at a different stage of life, away from home, and striving - in the suburbs of Prague, in a cheap Cypriot hotel - to understand just what it means to be alive here and now. Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are - ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing.

Howards End

Howards End is the story of the Schlegel sisters and their struggle to come to terms with social class and their German heritage in Edwardian England. Their lives are intertwined with those of the wealthy Wilcox family and their country house, Howards End, as well as the lower-middle-class Basts.

Hot Milk

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Hot Milk by Deborah Levy, read by Romola Garai. Two strangers arrive in a small Spanish fishing village. The older woman is suffering from mysterious paralysis, driven to seek a cure beyond the bounds of conventional medicine. Her daughter, Sofia, has spent years playing the reluctant detective in this mystery, struggling to understand her mother's illness.

Swing Time

Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and true identity, how they shape us and how we can survive them. Moving from Northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time. Two brown girls dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe or makes a person truly free.

Persuasion

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

The Bell Jar

Read by the critically acclaimed actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship at a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther's life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take women's aspirations seriously.

Lolita

Savagely funny and hauntingly sad, Lolita is Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel. It is the story of tortured college professor Humbert Humbert and his dangerous obsession with honey-skinned schoolgirl Dolores Haze.

Scoop

Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs. Algernon Stitch, Lord Copper feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. So begins Scoop.

Decline and Fall

Expelled from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

Publisher's Summary

To the Lighthouse is a landmark work of English fiction. Virginia Woolf explores perception and meaning in some of the most beautiful prose ever written, minutely detailing the characters thoughts and impressions. This unabridged version is read by Juliet Stevenson.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

What the Critics Say

"British actress Juliet Stevenson makes for a better reader of Woolf's words than Nicole Kidman's Oscar-winning turn as Woolf in The Hours...Her reading is quietly, carefully precise, and that precision is a solid complement to Woolf's own measured, inward-looking prose." (Publishers Weekly)

An interesting book but not very easy to follow since it is written in the form of "stream of consiousness" or "interior monologue", meaning that the narrator depicts the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of the characters- but Juliet Stevenson's reading renders the task much easier and even more enjoyable. She changes her voice in a way which makes it easy for the reader to know who is talking (sometimes it can be very hard to guess!). The difficulty of Virginia Woolf's writing, however, makes it necessary to stop and reread some passages. The book tells the story of Mrs Ramsay, a submissive wife and mother of eight children, who believes men to be intellectually superior to women "this admirable fabric of masculine intelligence", and who is constantly sympathizing with her tyranical husband and pitying men, especially the unmarried among them. She tries to marry Lily Briscoe, a young promising painter to Mr Bankes. but the former turns out to be a truly uncoventional woman who refuses to marry and who questions and internally rebells against Mrs Ramsay's utterly conventional and submissive attitude towards men.

On the surface not much happens in Virginia Woolf's semi-autobiographical modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse (1929). In Part I: The Window, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay (based on Woolf's own parents), their eight children, and several guests are vacationing at the Ramsays' summer house on the Isle of Skye in the early 20th century. Mrs. Ramsay, a meddling and kind fifty-year-old Greek-goddess, goes to town on errands, reads a fairy tale to her youngest child James, knits a stocking, presides over a dinner, communes without words with her husband, and holds the different people in the house together with the gravity of her charisma. Mr. Ramsay, an eccentric philosopher-academic, carries on with egotism, insecurity, and emotional tyranny. James' desire to visit the local lighthouse is thwarted by his father and the weather. Mr. Charles Tansley, an uptight disciple of Mr. Ramsay, asserts himself charmlessly. The somnolent and cat-eyed poet Mr. Carmichael reclines on the lawn. And independent, Chinese-eyed and pucker-faced Lily Briscoe works on a painting of Mrs. Ramsay and James and critically contemplates the family. In Part II: Time Passes, the forces of entropy besiege the house as it stands empty of people for ten years. And in Part III: The Lighthouse, Mr. Ramsay coerces his two youngest children--now moody teenagers—to accompany him to the lighthouse while Lily Briscoe--who partly represents Woolf herself as a writer--comes to terms with her feelings for Mrs. Ramsay as she tries to capture her vision in the painting she'd attempted ten years earlier.

Woolf is so good at sympathetically and honestly exposing people's minds and so good at revealing the beautiful and awful world we live in, and her writing is so beautiful, flowing, controlled, and poetic, that spending only a couple days with her characters is an indelibly rich experience. She employs a modernist stream of consciousness narration, and fluidly moves from one character to another. Her technique in the novel has been likened to that of the lighthouse beam moving across the benighted island world, briefly illuminating one mind and then another as it goes round, but Woolf's narration feels more organic than that. I relish her long, elegant sentences comprised of multiple clauses attached by semi-colons, her original and vivid metaphors, and her insights into human nature in a variety of vessels (male, female, old, young, educated, simple, etc.). I expected To the Lighthouse to be beautiful, philosophical, and sad, and it was, but I was surprised by its constant humor. At least as often as a poignant pang, I felt a flush of pleasure, similar to what Cam feels while sailing towards the lighthouse:

"From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the adventure (that she should be alive, that she should be there). And the drops falling from this sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell here and there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in her mind; shapes of a world not realised but turning in their darkness, catching here and there, a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople."

The dense novel explores the miraculous fragility and meaning (or lack thereof) of life; the varied and complex nature of love; the losses and gains involved in making families or living alone; the fraught relationships between children and parents; the confining roles of men and women; the surprising vividness and poignancy of memory; the complex nature of perception; the doomed but necessary attempt to understand other people; and the doomed but noble attempt through art to capture truth and to avoid entropy.

Juliet Stevenson was born to read Virginia Woolf! Her voice is lovely to listen to and full of understanding, irony, and sympathy, a perfect accompaniment to the text. With skillful subtlety, she modifies her voice for the thoughts of men and women and children and adults (and for the local Scottish workers who help the Ramsays). She carried me off To the Lighthouse. The only thing, perhaps, that is lost in the audiobook is Woolf's use of parentheses and brackets and semi-colons, which visually shape the reading of the text.

To the Lighthouse, like Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando, should be read by anyone interested in gender, art, love, life, modernism, beautiful prose, and early 20th century British culture.

57 of 58 people found this review helpful

Jaimie

HOUSTON, TX, United States

17/09/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Juliet Stevenson is perfection"

Would you try another book from Virginia Woolf and/or Juliet Stevenson?

I seriously can't recommend Juliet Stevenson enough. This book was a difficult read, and I'm very sure if I had read it to myself I wouldn't have understood it nearly so well as having it read to me by JS. You won't regret the choice.

22 of 22 people found this review helpful

Bette

Vista, CA USA

09/06/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Like a leaf in water"

Juliet Stevenson's reading of this rich novel is perfection. Her "cello-mellow voice" (a phrase borrowed from another stream-of-consciosness novel, Patrick White's Eye of the Storm), creates a range of voices which enhance understanding and draws the listener in "truly, madly, deeply" (to borrow from my favorite Juiet Stevenson movie).

The richness lies in Woolf's stimulating observations of the world through the interior dialogue of several individuals. She captures the continuum of conflicts within individual minds, the conflicts of enlightenment and romanticism world views, the conflicts between men and women, conflicts between parents and children, conflicts of artists of words and oils with artists of daily practical life, conflicts of reason and emotion, and, of course, conflicts of British classes.

The events are simple: a family and their guests plan and cancel a trip to the lighthouse in the first half. A death of a major character takes place "off stage" and the changed family returns and completes the trip. An artist struggles in both halves to capture the fleeting life before her. "One wants 50 pairs of eyes," she thinks as she grasps at the rapid changes.

For those who love words, ideas and art, here is an audio book that can be enjoyed numerous times for, as one character comments on her surroundings: "One could let whatever one thought expand here like a leaf in water..."

17 of 18 people found this review helpful

Thomas

Los Angeles, CA, USA

25/06/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Excellent but difficult book"

What did you like best about this story?

There is little plot to this story but Woolf's detailed description of the thoughts of the characters is amazing.and insightful.

What about Juliet Stevenson’s performance did you like?

To the Lighthouse is a brilliant but difficult book. It is often told in a "stream of consciousness" style. There is no narrator and little plot. Juliet Stevenson's energetic performance makes the novel is much easier to understand.

14 of 15 people found this review helpful

Edward

29/11/11

Overall

Performance

Story

"Wonderful Performance"

Juliet Stevenson does a wonderful job reading this story. She was great with Mrs. Dalloway and A Room Of One's Own as well. I would search her out specifically.

11 of 12 people found this review helpful

Bonny

West Brattleboro, VT, United States

14/12/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Utterly absorbing"

The prose is lyrical, almost surreal, and places you directly in whatever character Woolf is voicing. I felt as though I were there, experiencing everything along with the characters. There is a clarity and immediacy to Woolf's writing, and I found it completely absorbing. Not a lot happens in this book; it is a portrait of a family, the individuals and their relationships. If you're looking for an exciting plot and action, this is not for you. We get to know these characters so intimately, and yet there is so much that we don't know about them and so much they don't know about each other. Their attempts to reach each other, with occasional success, are very moving. The book is like a very subtle but major earthquake, after which the reader looks at other people with new eyes and with more compassion.

Juliet Stevenson is just perfect. Not a wrong note in the book. She has a beautiful voice that is pure pleasure to listen to.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

James Abraham

Boston, MA

01/05/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Atmospheric -- superlative reading by J.S."

At this point, I would pay $17.95 to hear Juliet Stevenson read refrigerator installation manuals. To hear her read the rigorous rationality of Virginia Woolf, who so sadly left before saying all that we need to hear, is wonderful. Not the first Juliet Stevenson-read book to get, but you have to get them all, anyway, so....

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Marcela

Rignano Flaminio, Italy

27/04/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great book... slightly complicated, but great"

Any additional comments?

It's a great book, nothing to say about that... but if you're looking for action, look elsewhere. Here it's all about insight, the same scene narrated from more than one point of view - of course, the main character is Mrs. Ramsey (the one who keeps the others together), but the author shows the thoughts of the others, as well - especially how they see Mrs. Ramsey and each other...

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Michael

Walnut Creek, CA, United States

05/01/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Old Modern Proto-feminist Steam of Consciousness"

This book is a pleasant stream of consciousness novel with little dialog or story. The characters are explored through their inner dialog and their perceptions of the environment, the other characters and, most importantly, themselves. There is a bit of (justifiable) feminist angst in the writing which I found a distraction weakening the work and distracting from the primary focus.

The narration was excellent, using delicate pacing and tone to express complex internal states. The narration switches between characters which was a bit difficult to follow at points.

I was surprised to see an attached PDF file. This has the CD liner notes, including a table of contents and a nice historical note by Roy McMillan.

Although I liked To the Lighthouse, I liked Proust and Joyce quite a bit better.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

dngold77

San Francisco, CA USA

04/12/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Perfect"

Where does To the Lighthouse rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The audio book is 6 hours of pure shimmering, insightful, delightful, mournful, intellectually stimulating, emotionally resonate literary perfection. In this slender volume, Woolf does what it took Thomas Mann over 500 pages of Magic Mountain and DH Lawrence two books (The Rainbow and Women in Love) to do - write an insightful meditation on the subjective nature of life, the transcendent power of art, the subtle, complex interrelations of personalities, and the existential change in perspective that occurred after WWI. Woolf is at her writing peak with prose that is perfected crafted, detailed but never forced and her words come alive with Juliet Stephenson crisp, English accent. She makes it feel like the characters are whispering to you, an effect very much in line with Wolf’s intent. I've read the book twice, and listening this third time was a joy. This is one of the great books of modern literature.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.